LVMH Watch Week: The 2026 Escale Collection Debuts Two New Versions Of The Escale Worldtime, Including A World-First Central Tourbillon

LVMH Watch Week has just kicked off in Milan, and there are new releases from all the LVMH watch brands. Louis Vuitton is debuting a number of new watches, including new timepieces in the Escale Collection, as well as a very charming new clock, and a new Convergence watch with a radiantly beautiful guilloché dial (although it’s not really a dial in the conventional sense). For followers of Louis Vuitton’s history of watchmaking, the new Escale pieces are especially compelling (which is not to take anything away from the Convergence, about which more in a separate story) and each of the new three pieces take advantage of the Escale design vocabulary showcased in 2024 when the Escale time-only collection of watches was introduced, along with the three métiers d’art Carp, Serpent, and Dragon pieces, known collectively as the Cabinet of Wonders.

The Louis Vuitton Escale Worldtime 2026

The first version of the Escale Worldtime was released as a limited edition in 2014 and if there is any complication that fits the Escale name and design cues of the collection to a T, it’s probably the world time complication. The first version of the Escale Worldtime took a very different approach to displaying local time than most other world time watches, which have conventional hour and minute hands, as well as a disk showing reference cities for 24 timezones with full hour offsets from GMT, and a constantly driven 24 hour ring. The hour hand can be reset to local time with a pusher in the caseband, and the city ring will advance at the same time, in order to show the reference city for the local time at 12:00.

The original 50 piece limited edition Escale Worldtime, which we looked at last year for A Watch A Week, had no conventional hour or minute hand; instead, the watch used two rotating disks for the hours and minutes, with a fixed yellow hand allowing you to read off the local time. The watch has a city disk, elaborately decorated with flag-like designs drawn from Louis Vuitton’s extensive iconography as a trunk designer (and which bear a strong resemblance to marine signal flags). The new version of the Escale Worldtime has been updated with a center minute hand, although the hours are still indicated by a fixed dial marker (in this case, a small triangle at 12:00). In order to improve legibility, the Escale Worldtime has both a jumping hour and jumping minute indication.

The general operation of the watch is identical to that of the 2014 model; the reference city is shown at 12:00 and the hour disk can be adjusted in one hour increments. The design is more intuitive to read than the original (which despite the fact that the display took a little getting used to, had its own idiosyncratic charm) and the watch is being released in a 40mm platinum case.

The “flags” on the city disk for the Louis Vuitton Escale World Time are, like those for the Escale Time Zone (released in 2015) decorated by hand. For the Escale World Time (as well as for the Time Zone) the flags are created by filling cells on the dial with a thermosetting epoxy resin (sometimes called “cold enamel” in the industry, to distinguish it from vitreous fired, or grand feu, enamel). There are 35 different colors used, and after each color is applied, the enamel is cured in an oven, which makes the process quite time consuming; LV says it takes about a week to make each dial. If you happen to visit La Fabrique du Temps in Geneva, where the dials are made, you may be asked if you would like to take a shot at filling one of the cells on a sample dial with paint, which in my case, when I tried it a couple of years ago, was a hilarious exercise in humility. The enamel is applied with a brush consisting of a single hair taken from the tail of a squirrel (no word on what LVMH does with the rest of the squirrel, but it is amusing to think of a host of squirrels all missing just one tail hair, disporting themselves in the woods around Geneva) and it is extremely challenging; you have to apply just enough enamel to fill the cell but not so much that it spills, and my sample dial – I was using red enamel – ended up looking like a microscopic crime scene.

If you were a fan of the original Escale Worldtime, you’ll probably find the new version very attractive; all the design intelligence and craftsmanship present in the original is present in the new model and it’s a chance to experience something rather rare in horology, which is a genuinely original take on the classic world time complication.

The Escale Worldtime (2026): Case, platinum, 40mm x 10.3mm, sapphire crystals front and back, with saffron sapphire gem set into the caseback indicating a platinum case. Water resistance 50M. Dial, miniature painting in 35 colors; white gold minute hand and hour indicator. Movement, LFTVO12.01, automatic, developed at La Fabrique du Temps; worldtime with day/night indication for 24 time zones, with jumping hours and minutes; 18k oscillating weight; running in 35 jewels at 28,800 vph and adjusted to six positions; 62 hour power reserve. All indications set from the crown. Price, $94,500 at launch. 

The Louis Vuitton Escale Flying Tourbillon, The World’s First Central Tourbillon Worldtimer

Central flying tourbillons are quite rare overall; the independent watchmaker Beat Haldimann is famous for his central tourbillons; Omega was a pioneer in their creation; BVLGARI makes the Papillon Octo Roma central tourbillon; Kross Studios makes one in the shape of the Death Star, if that’s your brand of vodka. Louis Vuitton has made central tourbillons something of a signature complication, in watches like the Tambour Taiko Spin Time Air Flying Tourbillon and for LVMH Watch Week 2026, Louis Vuitton has combined the central tourbillon with a world time complication.

Functionally, the central tourbillon version of the worldtime watch is identical to the non-tourby version; there is a city ring with 24 reference cities, and if you look closely, you’ll see that the flags for each city have almost the same design and colors in both versions. Both watches have a constantly driven 24 disk, with divisions for day and night (the lighter segment of the disk, which corresponds approximately to daylight hours, starts at 6:30AM and ends at 6:30PM). At the center is  the tourbillon – a flying tourbillon, rotating once per minute, in the shape of the Louis Vuitton monogram flower.

The addition of a central tourbillon means making some major changes to the architecture of the movement, since in world time watches the hour ring is driven off the hour wheel at the center of the movement (generally speaking, in classic world time watches, there is no center or small seconds hand; a small seconds hand in a traditionally laid out movement would have to have its pivot running through the hour disk). For the Lous Vuitton Escale Worldtime Flying Tourbillon to work, the entire system for driving the hour disk, as well as the minute hand, had to be redesigned to accommodate the central flying tourbillon. The whole idea of making a world time complication with a central tourbillon would I think strike most watch companies, or even ambitious independents, as a non-starter and this is one of those rare occasions on which we see a true world first in fine watchmaking. As with the non-tourbillon version, the tourbillon model has jumping hour and jumping minute indications.

The other significant difference between the flying central tourbillon worldtimer, and the non-tourbillon model, is in the city ring – while the non-tourby version uses cold enamel, the flying central tourbillon version uses grand feu/vitreous enamel.

To the extent that there are design differences between the city rings in the two different versions of the Escale Worldtime, it’s thanks to the use of fired enamel for the tourbillon watch – there are slightly fewer colors used in the tourbillon; 25, vs. 35 in the non-tourbillon model. If I had to classify it, I’d say that the city ring in the tourbillon model is an example of champlevé enameling, in which hollows in a metal surface are filled in with enamel before firing. The city ring requires over 40 separate firings and takes a single enameler more than two weeks to produce.

The Louis Vuitton Escale Worldtime Flying Tourbillon, ref. W3PT41: case, platinum, 40mm x 12.8mm, sapphire crystals front and back with saffron sapphire on the caseback indicating a platinum case; water resistance, 50M. Movement, caliber LFT VO05.01, automatic, worldime with day/night indication for 24 timezones; central flying tourbillon with peripheral minute hand; jumping hour and minute indications; 18k rose gold oscillating weight; 337 components running in 40 jewels, at 28,800 vph with a 62 hour power reserve. Price, $239,000. 

Both of these watches are exceptional in some obvious ways and in some ways which are perhaps less obvious. As we’ve said, there is a strong family resemblance between virtually all worldtime watches, based as they are on the original design created in the 1930s by Louis Cottier. Worldtime watches are on-brand for Louis Vuitton given its history as a purveyor of luggage and other necessities for the well-heeled world traveler, but the two new Escale Worldtime watches show a lot of care in keeping the design features that made the Escale Worldtime such a conversation piece all the way back in 2014 – including the use of jumping hour and minute indications to ensure legibility, and increased power reserves over the 38 hours offered in 2014. There are certainly worldtime watches out there which give you all the connection to tradition you could possibly want, but the new Escale worldtime watches have their own distinct and charming character, and a unique design intelligence as well.